What about tutorials & Articles?

[WILL]

BlueCat: I'm glad you agree with the 'one site' concept. Would could somehow merge the name too to show that one isn't taking over the other, rather they are both comming together to make one site. Still need to see what Savage decideds though. Does he want to do this with us?

iLLUNis: Hmm... Maybe not the best example either. That would fit if they had the same function(Intel makes chips and other things, MS makes software and a few hardware bits), both have a very different "products and services". Now it could work if DGDev stayed as forums and DelphiGamer stayed as is, but I don't think that is what we are wanting to do here...

Turbo: Hey thanks for joinning our discussion. Your a big part of the community and I believe that with your interest in this we can really benifit from your knowledge and efforts. We already do so with Turbo(the site). BlueCat brings up an interesting point about your site being not-just-Delphi, which makes oddities, if you would want to bring Turbo to the mix(This is just to throw the idea out there, I'm not forcing the issue or anything...). Now, is this something that you would like to throw into the mix? You could very-well move your news to the new DelphiGameDev site and still be able to have quite a bit of content to host, if you chose to do that. The reason I'm so into the idea of merging the "staff" of these sites is that instead of having all of them existing as separate entities hurts the overall idea of a large single community as opposed to a few small scattered villages, if you will. So, like I asked Savage, would you like to join the new Delphi Game Developer Super-Duper Community Site? [<-- Please lets not call it this?]


And now I rant:

:arrow: Typical Scenario with the mish-mash approach

New(and I mean new to programming in general) guy learns pascal/Delphi for whatever freak reason(I caught on by fluke after playing with TP7/BP7 for so long).

His friends who are *ahem* self proclaimed "experts" by the age of XX-teen(yeah, I'll admit, I was very oppinionated at an early age myself :twisted: ) in highschool keep bugging him to drop Pascal and its dead and a whole line of stuff. But he is determined and finds the language, like most of us, to be easy to code in.

Now he hears somehow that there are tools and libraries that help you make really cool games with it... Uh oh, he starts looking for game development sites. Has already been to some.

His searches bring him to GameDev and other site(alot of them feturing and C++ and a whole ton with crazy names that I don't care to remember half of them ) AND eventually to the new DelphiGameDeveloper site-err sites?. Uh oh...

He sticks around long enough to see that oh look there is news for new and exciting things going on with Delphi...on another site... :shock: err... ok... well there are tutorials here... hmm all next to text, not to colorfull... hmm borring!(Not the best attitue to have, I do agree, but new people are like this they need to see pretty graphics and nicely designed everything or they lose interest, quickly...) He will also notice that the people working on the sites are sparse sue to lack of enthusiasm, the pages are that great to look at([Hold on don't hit me!] Now, I'm not saying that the sites look bad or that the great effort put into either one isn't at all good. But to tie in the two sites so that they are joinned at the hip, how nasty a contrast would they be to one another with the current scemes they are in now? Plus the fact that seemless will not be on the table at this point.)

Here is where our hero(err new guy) starts to squirm... the young brain is starting to work out his new found knowlage(hampster power! - I'm in a strange mood can you tell?) :idea: Hmm... well everything is all over the place and now very well designed... it looks like a little hobby site(ok ok, so some hobby sites look great and we are sort of doing this as our hobby, but what we are looking at is building a comunity not a small hobby site).

So our new found new guy remembers all the crap that his friends dumped on him about Pascal(probably still are) and he continues to be discouraged by the lack of organization that the mish-mash presents(If you don't have a solid foundation to build upon from the start the structure will shake and someday fall...) he continues to see how sites like GameDev thrive with activity and that most of the content is C related things... eventually one day :idea: Screw this... I think I'll just learn C.


This is worst case scenario, but not far off from what a spit up divided, multi-site, patch-up project would detail. We do not want this we want something to the effect of GameDev for Delphi right? We have to start it right from the start properly if we want to actually build a larger community from where we are now. Am I "beating the war drum"? Well... yes. I think we need this. And we need to do it right from "go".

[BlueCat]

I think it's time we started posting some new threads so that we can keep track of different issues. There are some really great ideas but they could get lost in what is becoming a very long post to read from the start.

In fact, I'm going to take my own advice right now and start a new thread

[Avatar]

Will, I totally agree with you. (I remember some times ago when I was in the case of the "hero")

Since we do not want this worst case scenario happens, we have to make things properly. I guess that building a design doc and having a good share of tasks within the team can lead us to a good result that would avoid that case. But we must be organised

The problem with the activity of sites like Gamedev or Flipcode is that plenties of people thinks that Delphi sucks ... But you can't tell since you've tasted can you ? Anyway some guys won't make pub for Delphi since C(or C++) is the *best langage ever*.

well there are tutorials here... hmm all next to text, not to colorfull... hmm borring!(Not the best attitue to have, I do agree, but new people are like this they need to see pretty graphics and nicely designed everything or they lose interest, quickly...)

I apologize but I'm french ... I fear that I didn't understand what you were meaning. You say that people won't hold on since there are no graphics on the pages ? But, I feel that it's quite logical. Because, If you're trying to achieve an effect, you find a tut but you do not see what will be the result ... This can be quite frustrating if, at the end, you realize that it's not really what you were looking for ... isn't it ?

Anyway, if I write tuts for DGDev(and I'll surely do), I'll give images with the text ... I guess it's very important to have some previews of what you are doing ... To help the reader to understand and to see the goal

so ! That's all for that post lol !

Bye
Avatar

[Useless Hacker]

I think it would be a good idea to expand DGDev, and merge with DelphiGamer and/or turbo if they are willing. I have nothing to do between now and the end of September, so I would be happy to write some tutorials or help with the site's development.

[WILL]

LOL I think we're getting back to the original reason why this thread was posted.

Avatar: What I meant was that with these forums only any tutorials that would be posted here with phpBB would at best, be like reading an RTF document(you can stick small images in RTF can't you?). But if they were full HTML written and had images of examples like you are saying then it becomes a better experience and more than just straight text(formatted and colored or not) fed straight to your brain. That and they are just plain more fun to do and read.

Usless Hacker: Glad you are interested. You should have a look at some of the other threads relating to the new DGDev site project.

[Avatar]

Avatar: What I meant was that with these forums only any tutorials that would be posted here with phpBB would at best, be like reading an RTF document(you can stick small images in RTF can't you?). But if they were full HTML written and had images of examples like you are saying then it becomes a better experience and more than just straight text(formatted and colored or not) fed straight to your brain. That and they are just plain more fun to do and read.

Oh yes For sure ^^ HTML is far more comfortable than RTF lol

[cairnswm]

I would like to see DGDev grow. I love using delphi and use it at every opportunity that I get

I would definitly be willing to be part of whatever group is getting together to discuss the future of the site. My feeling is that it should be a public discussion as we are having now rather than a private discussion (I will however join a group specifically for this anyway).

One of the big things missing from DGDev are links to other sites tutorials - look at all the tutorials available at Travellers and Alimonsters sites. Lets start collating all the information on the internet together as well.

[technomage]

Hi Guys

Dom has just informed me of this dicussion so I thought I'd post my comments.

As Dom aslready mentioned limited spare time has been the main cause of the lack of posting on Delphi Gamer (a big thanks to Dom for doing almost all of the posting in the last 2 years ). As Turbo said more dedicated reporters/Article writers would be needed to bring these sites back up. A central Delphi Game Developement site is a great idea, as Dom said that was one of our goals when DelphiGamer was started all those years ago, but with limited time, resources and new projects things are going to slow down.

Now if a large enough group of commited developers can get together and push the Delphi gamer development comminuty then I for one would support that movement (in what spare time I had). If DelphiGamer is replaced/merged with this new site then so be it.

I personally like the name DelphiGamer, the origional idea was to have a monthly on-line magazine which covered all the latest delphi gamer development news and tutorials, kind of an on-line Game Development Mag.

I am the one that owns the domain for DelphiGamer and I will continue to pay for that domain as long as the comminuty wants it. So the option is there if the community want to re-launch DelphiGamer (with input from myself and Dom) .

Dean ( aka Technomage)
www.delphigamer.com
www.cerebral-bicycle.co.uk

[WILL]

Hey Dean, thanks for taking the time to come and post your thoughts on this very important topic. Obviously, I'm the guy that started this whole new super-Delphi-site idea as of recent(though there were other hinted discussions of the like before). I think that by creating one big site from the combining of both "staffs" would allow us to create a larger Delphi Gaming community from the existing one that exists and is shared here on DGDev. It would also make cultivating that community all the more easier because we will litteraly be sharing the same resources and all be on the same team. There are alot of modivated people that want to start helping with the idea as I type and I think that this is out best solution. If you would like to see some of the other ideas that me, BlueCat, Traveler, Avatar, cairnswm and all the others that want to help out have come up with, please come and look at the other threads in this forum directory.

I think that the merger of the two staffs and creation of the new site wouuld be in ll of our best interests, thats not to say that we can't pool our current resources(older news posts and tutorials and the existing forum messages on DelphiGamer and posts here) to help kick off the newly made site.

The BIG question: :?: Savage has said that he is willing so long as it's ok by you. So if you give us the official "OK" then we can start establishing the staff and get to work. :?:

[Eriken]

Speaking about Tutorials and Articles... The idea came up to have some scouts around to look for articles/tutorials elsewhere and check if we can use them, because I think there is enough to do without actually having to reinvent the wheel everytime..

There is probably also Delphi-sites in German, Dutch, etc which have great articles.. and if we get a permission from the owners to translate them to English those would be quite an asset too.

Well, it was an idea atleast..

(And now I've stepped right into Will's big question so now I'll get shot )
_____
Eriken